The Reminiscences of E.E. Weir
Fifty years old. That amazes me. It seems only a few years ago that I first swam in Tamarama surf when I was just half that age. Nowadays by the time a surfer reaches twenty-five he has earned his "Bronze", has served his time as an active member and is entitled to (and unfortunately frequently does) retire into the seclusion of the retired active list of his club.
I always regard it as one of the greatest blessings of my life that I found the surf at a time when surf swimming really started and just before the birth of the Surf Life Saving movement. It would be a crowning blessing if I could claim any credit for the formation of the Tamarama club or the Surf Life Saving Association. I had come from South Australia and somehow had stumbled upon Tamarama and gradually came to know a few of the men swimmers and when a suggestion was made that a club be formed I was happy to be a part of it. Just who those men were I cannot recollect. To me they were casual acquaintances and it is over fifty years ago. That is not much of a foundation upon which to build a stable history. I clearly remember, though, that I parted with 2/- to help pay for a reel. I remember, that, because for the next fortnight I had to walk down to and back from the beach. Later, of course, I got to know them all very well. A casual sort of beginning for a club. I have no doubt that most of the clubs that sprang up like mushrooms about that time had just such a beginning, and the Surf Association, too. Who could have dreamt that it would have grown into the amazing altruistic association it is in the present day?
They argue back and forth as to which club was formed first. If Tamarama wasn't the first, I'm sure that it was not very far behind. One thing I'm game to bet on - Tamarama had the first reel ever put on any beach, a crude affair with a wide cork belt that reached from well below the diaphragm high up into your Adam's Apple. Still it was reasonably effective and was still in use years after the present form was designed. The last I saw of it was when the present clubroom was opened and it was on display at the special request of our foundation president, the late G. B. Philip. What became of it I do now know possibly tossed out as junk. A pity – it really was a museum piece.
At a very early stage of Tamarama's career we were in grave danger of having access to the beach cut off owing, first to Wonderland City, and later to the subdivision and sale of land adjacent to the club. The public owes much to the vigilance of some of our early members, notably G. B. Philip, father of our president, who, more than any other man, was responsible for the birth and growth of the club. Then Bill Stewart, grandfather of our worthy member Ken. Bill, I think, was the leader of the band that kept cutting the barbed-wire that the Wonderland City people stretched from the cliff-tops towards the water. Later Tom Brooks, grandfather of those two fine swimmers, the Marrott brothers, was responsible for having the surveyors' pegs moved back so that roadway was left at the top of the cliff.
In the beginning Tamarama Club grew and thrived wholly as a result of the efforts of the members themselves. We managed to build ourselves a clubroom, same site as the present one, on land which I always thought we held under a 99-year lease from the Lands Department. There were a few relics of the old cable trams strewn about the cliff. We had a working bee one morning and manhandled one of them to near the back of the clubroom – where your boatshed is now. It proved very popular, especially with the urchins that invaded the club. By the time we had a fence around it we thought we owned a palace.
We progressed quietly and happily, the Club itself a home from home for a number of members during the weekends. Some quite good cooks we found among them, too. Many a good dinner they put on to finish off the annual meetings, and snacks for the smokos and so forth; the cooking utensils, a couple of frying pans, a sheet of iron for a griller and a few kerosene tins. Bill Stewart usually ran those shows — a born organiser if ever there was one. Fred Denham kept track of the financial end. You would be surprised how low he kept the expenses. He had to – none of us had any money. I can't remember anybody being paid as an entertainer, either.
Then we got a jolt.
A commission of sorts, comprising, I think members from the Councils and the Surf Association, which, by then, had taken shape, went around to see what should be done about the surfing beaches and Tamarama was condemned. To this day I have never quite forgiven the men responsible for that. I don't know who they were, and I hope I never find out. We were a small club, with a small beach, admittedly dangerous, with more potential trouble in its hundred yards than the whole of Bondi. Surfing had progressed to such an extent that there was no hope of keeping the people out of the water. And there we were left to our own devices and deprived of all hope of help. So we carried on, on our own.
In the end, of course, the march of time and progress caught up with us. Our 99-year lease proved untenable and we were between the upper and nether mill-stones. Crown lands were transferred to the Councils and we had no option but to sign a five-year lease for the site of our own clubroom, one condition of which was that we have to supply beach inspectors, and they had to be qualified lifesavers — that is, holders of the Bronze Medallion of the Surf Association, and we didn't belong to it. About that time we had a delegation from the Surf Association who put to us the case for affiliation. It was headed by Tommy Glazebrook, one of the hardest workers the Association ever had and one of its finest gentlemen. He met with considerable opposition from the older members – I was very angry myself — we considered that we had been betrayed. But common sense and the interest of the younger members prevailed, and we became once more club affiliated with the Surf Association. In truth, we had no option. We were licked and we had to acknowledge it with the best grace we could muster. From being the free and independent founders of the Tamarama Surf Club we became the vassals of the Waverley Council, and we surrendered our freedom to the Surf Association.
You have got to hand it to those old members of Tamarama. Having surrendered, they made no half-measure of it, but got behind the younger members and helped and encouraged them in every way possible, and the boys themselves really got down to it. The end of the season saw thirteen of them with the Bronze Medallion, and don't run away with the idea that the whole credit for that belongs to those trainer-instructors from the Association who came along to put the finishing touches on the squads. From that time on the affairs of the club are much the same as any other surf club, and the records are there for all the world to see.
These records are out of my province in these reminiscences, but I shall mention, rather proudly, the last annual meeting before the termination of the Second World War, notwithstanding the fact that we had mustered every vice-president of the club and all officers and members still available, we couldn't muster a quorum. It was what the war did to us and how our lads were caught up with it. We got over the administrative part of it with a motion that all officers should carry on for the next year. Everybody available, and they were few, came out of the retired active list to carry on the Surf Life Saving tradition until the boys came back. We were breaking the law, of course. We had no authority to control the beach or the club, neither did we have authority to work on our bank account. None of the cheques bounced, and when the boys came home they passed a resolution endorsing our action, and so freed us from the taint of forgery and embezzlement.
We were not much better off during the First World War. Tamarama's war record was second to no sporting organisation. We are proud of our club, of its records in war and peace, proud of the boys who have guarded our beach all these years. The degree of skill attained by members today enables them to perform astonishing feats of rescue, which, for the most part are taken just as a matter of course by the general public. The boys themselves look for no reward. They never did so. Had it been otherwise the movement would have been still born. As matters stand, it is the one true amateur sport, one in which no member can gain profit for himself. It stands as a bright and shining example of unselfishness and self-sacrifice in a brutally materialistic world.
Whether any of those old original founders of the Club are still on deck, I do not know. If they are I'm sure they enjoy as I do many a quiet chuckle over the many occasions we had. God speed them all.
E.E. Weir, Patron (1956)